If Japan is any indication, buyers worldwide are avoiding PlayStation consoles. Following the latest PS5 and PS5 Pro price increase, the systems experienced a dramatic decline in weekly sales. With the Xbox Series X making up ground, only the region-locked digital option remains appealing.
The Famitsu data includes several days before the unwelcome announcement. Even so, buyers are already shying away from PlayStation consoles that are straining wallets . The PS5 with optical drive moved 558 units, down from 2,801 sold the week before. Not faring any better, adoption of the Pro went from 4,662 to 840.
Xbox gaining high percentage because they sell 100x less units than Sony.
From that famitsu issue:
Hardware Sales (followed by lifetime sales)
Switch 2 – 59,543 (5,011,059)
PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 12,141 (1,248,515)
Switch OLED Model – 7,468 (9,526,329)
Switch Lite – 4,807 (6,903,964)
Switch – 4,067 (20,0271,045)
PlayStation 5 Pro – 840 (341,548)
PlayStation 5 – 558 (5,910,474)
Xbox Series X – 525 (325,952)
Xbox Series X Digital Edition – 278 (29,362)
Xbox Series S – 129 (341,622)
So, PS5 digital non pro sold 12k units while the equivalent Xbox digital non pro sold 120 units.
If next month a Japanese retailer does a clearance sale and sells 200 Xboxes the headline isn’t “Xbox got a massive 100% increase in sold units in Japan, while Sony tumbled 2%”
With a DOUBLED sale rate from yesterday, and a continuous rate of growth from the past two days, I’m already looking to internationalize the business and establish 800 new offices!
Buying the disk version of the Playstation 5 at launch might have been the best investment I’ve made this decade, followed closely by the extra RAM kit and 2TB Samsung 990 SSD I bought in Aug. 2025.
This had me searching “PS5 extra ram kit” like a buffoon.
But actually, same boat. Launch PS5, bought ram and a 2TB SSD early 2025. I shouldn’t have held back on that new GPU though.
This kind of luck must run in my family, my brother and his partner both traded in their cars for EVs two days before the Epstein War started. Little shit is laughing at me when I text him the cost to fill up.
I’m still running a 2080Ti so I’m doing ok, but it it definitely starting to show it’s age. I somehow ended up with an Intel low profile GPU from my local tech store (I couldn’t even tell you the model) for like $65USD and it had display port so I decided to plug my monitors into it, and it helped my primary GPU performance more than I expected. Maybe something to look into? Assuming your mobo and CPU can handle 2 GPUs ofc
My MOBO and CPU can no issue, but I’ve got one 1440p and would like to upgrade my other monitor to the same reaolution but I feel that my 3070 is holding me back. I should have done a bit more research, got a TI or something, maybe.
I’m not dissatisfied, my setup does what it needs to, but I feel that for just a few dollars more (a lot more dollars now) I could have bypassed this inconvenience.
I feel that for just a few dollars more (a lot more dollars now) I could have bypassed this inconvenience.
Ain’t this the truth. “Do I buy this thing I sort of need right now when it’s a BIT overpriced, or wait until it gets REALLY overpriced” is the modern dilemma consumers are facing across the board, it seems.
Best investment I made was NOT buying a console again and getting locked into shitty Xbox Live service. Fuck consoles man, they got too greedy with all this shit. I run emulators now, fuck billion dollar companies profiting off our love for games. No more I say, never again! Microsucks, Nintenchargemeandarmandleg, and Sokneetrippedmeagain
While I agree with you wrt consoles locking people in, my parents are hobby console collectors and that got passed down to me. I buy whatever comes out and sell as needed. But is it getting less fun to collect with the current gen, I’m not gonna lie. Games don’t even come on discs anymore, so a physical collection is starting to become useless.
For anyone curious: I don’t scalp/resell btw, MSRP + shipping as needed, this is a hobby not a side hustle for me.
I don’t think Sony is discovering anything. They’ve said the focus this year isn’t on console sales but rather the bigger monetization of the existing userbase. They probably thought that since they’re not planning on selling a lot of units anyway they might as well ask extra from anyone determined to get one.
…the average worker in Africa would need to spend more than a year of wages to buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. Game consoles are in fact luxury goods, we just take them for granted.
It’s because serving the rich creates higher margins, which in turn means higher chance of survival for the company during an economic downturn. In the clothing industry the companies that fared well during the previous recession were companies that target the elites like Hermes. While many brands that served the middle class went bust.
You see this trend in many industries. Like the choices of low budget cars are getting slimmer each year. While the sticker price of mid budget cars have gone up.
Maybe. I find that to be a really weird business strategy. But, maybe their analysts are very confident that console gaming is rapidly dying. If not… shrug.
How? Xbox increased more, and first. And Xbox always did poorly in Japan.
If anyone doesn’t know the history, I think it was NEC, was a big electronics company in Japan that tried to make computers that competed with Windows 95 (because they ran something else, I forgot which) and they got their asses handed to them. So the Japanese have been salty toward Microsoft since then. The grudge has started to fade a bit, but it was still going strong at the start of the Series X|S generation (2020). The problem is twofold: Japanese developers won’t make games for Xbox, only Nintendo and/or PlayStation. And two, gamers aren’t buying Xbox in Japan.
I wonder if Xbox went up at all in Japan. It never moved much there. I wonder if they even bothered installing GamePass CDNs there. I wouldn’t.
Also worth noting, a lot of gamers/power user types in the west have been turning against Microsoft for issues with Windows 11 and Copilot. I got tired of their shit years ago and went to Mac for computers, but I still game on an Xbox Series X.
I do like seeing PlayStation get taken down a peg, because for all Microsoft’s issues, PlayStation has always been more anti-consumer. Trophies exist on PlayStation because Achievements were so popular on Xbox that PlayStation (and Steam) were practically forced to adopt them. Xbox has pushed for cross-play and PlayStation has always rejected it. Backwards compatibility is what the PS2 was known for, and the PS3 did it at first, but since then, they haven’t been as good, whereas Xbox has been great about backwards compatibility. Not perfect but great.
The official PS blog says the disc version of the PS5 is $649 and discless is $599. It’s currently on sale on Amazon, but the regular list price for a PS5 with disc drive there is $649.
Whilst it’s an oversimplification, if the old price only got Y sales then a higher new price was always only going to get a subset of Y.
Console sales go up over time in part because the price goes down, broadening the customer base. Sure, the library gets bigger over time too, but that’s barely happening either.
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Xbox gaining high percentage because they sell 100x less units than Sony.
From that famitsu issue:
Hardware Sales (followed by lifetime sales)
So, PS5 digital non pro sold 12k units while the equivalent Xbox digital non pro sold 120 units.
If next month a Japanese retailer does a clearance sale and sells 200 Xboxes the headline isn’t “Xbox got a massive 100% increase in sold units in Japan, while Sony tumbled 2%”
I sold two lemonades at my street corner.
With a DOUBLED sale rate from yesterday, and a continuous rate of growth from the past two days, I’m already looking to internationalize the business and establish 800 new offices!
(Not mocking you, just investor logic)
Buying the disk version of the Playstation 5 at launch might have been the best investment I’ve made this decade, followed closely by the extra RAM kit and 2TB Samsung 990 SSD I bought in Aug. 2025.
Guess I can eat avocado toast guilt-free 🥹
This had me searching “PS5 extra ram kit” like a buffoon.
But actually, same boat. Launch PS5, bought ram and a 2TB SSD early 2025. I shouldn’t have held back on that new GPU though.
This kind of luck must run in my family, my brother and his partner both traded in their cars for EVs two days before the Epstein War started. Little shit is laughing at me when I text him the cost to fill up.
I’m still running a 2080Ti so I’m doing ok, but it it definitely starting to show it’s age. I somehow ended up with an Intel low profile GPU from my local tech store (I couldn’t even tell you the model) for like $65USD and it had display port so I decided to plug my monitors into it, and it helped my primary GPU performance more than I expected. Maybe something to look into? Assuming your mobo and CPU can handle 2 GPUs ofc
My MOBO and CPU can no issue, but I’ve got one 1440p and would like to upgrade my other monitor to the same reaolution but I feel that my 3070 is holding me back. I should have done a bit more research, got a TI or something, maybe.
I’m not dissatisfied, my setup does what it needs to, but I feel that for just a few dollars more (a lot more dollars now) I could have bypassed this inconvenience.
Ain’t this the truth. “Do I buy this thing I sort of need right now when it’s a BIT overpriced, or wait until it gets REALLY overpriced” is the modern dilemma consumers are facing across the board, it seems.
Best investment I made was NOT buying a console again and getting locked into shitty Xbox Live service. Fuck consoles man, they got too greedy with all this shit. I run emulators now, fuck billion dollar companies profiting off our love for games. No more I say, never again! Microsucks, Nintenchargemeandarmandleg, and Sokneetrippedmeagain
While I agree with you wrt consoles locking people in, my parents are hobby console collectors and that got passed down to me. I buy whatever comes out and sell as needed. But is it getting less fun to collect with the current gen, I’m not gonna lie. Games don’t even come on discs anymore, so a physical collection is starting to become useless.
For anyone curious: I don’t scalp/resell btw, MSRP + shipping as needed, this is a hobby not a side hustle for me.
Hope you don’t keep it vertical, there were videos on YouTube saying that liquid metal in the original models pools at the bottom with time
good to know, mine’s actually currently upside down because that’s the only way the power cord reaches my outlet 💀
Good thing I never have put my consoles in vertical mode besides the series x because it was designed to be that way first.
Uhoh. I have a slim model, will I be okay?
I don’t know, I saw people saying that pro has this addressed (for example this video https://youtu.be/ojLoP9ddseg) and that some slims have this adjustment as well, but you need to check when it was made I guess https://www.pcmag.com/news/sony-updates-ps5-ps5-slim-to-address-liquid-metal-leak-problem
I’ve never understood why people are so into avocados. I personally find them slimy and suspicious.
They taste good. They taste even better mashed up with other stuff as a condiment.
Part of a much larger trend of companies finding out that there is a limit to consumer spending, and most consumers are already beyond it.
I don’t think Sony is discovering anything. They’ve said the focus this year isn’t on console sales but rather the bigger monetization of the existing userbase. They probably thought that since they’re not planning on selling a lot of units anyway they might as well ask extra from anyone determined to get one.
Given wealth inequality growing in every country, expect this trend to continue.
Higher prices for everything as more and more products become luxury only goods, and everything else is for the peasantry.
…the average worker in Africa would need to spend more than a year of wages to buy an Xbox or a PlayStation. Game consoles are in fact luxury goods, we just take them for granted.
That’s why I got an Atari 2600 and not an original NES.
It’s because serving the rich creates higher margins, which in turn means higher chance of survival for the company during an economic downturn. In the clothing industry the companies that fared well during the previous recession were companies that target the elites like Hermes. While many brands that served the middle class went bust.
You see this trend in many industries. Like the choices of low budget cars are getting slimmer each year. While the sticker price of mid budget cars have gone up.
I’m willing to bet it’s at least in part to anchor a higher price for the PS6. It’ll “only” be a little more expensive than this, so why not buy it?
Maybe. I find that to be a really weird business strategy. But, maybe their analysts are very confident that console gaming is rapidly dying. If not… shrug.
LOL
LMAO
XD
How? Xbox increased more, and first. And Xbox always did poorly in Japan.
If anyone doesn’t know the history, I think it was NEC, was a big electronics company in Japan that tried to make computers that competed with Windows 95 (because they ran something else, I forgot which) and they got their asses handed to them. So the Japanese have been salty toward Microsoft since then. The grudge has started to fade a bit, but it was still going strong at the start of the Series X|S generation (2020). The problem is twofold: Japanese developers won’t make games for Xbox, only Nintendo and/or PlayStation. And two, gamers aren’t buying Xbox in Japan.
I wonder if Xbox went up at all in Japan. It never moved much there. I wonder if they even bothered installing GamePass CDNs there. I wouldn’t.
Also worth noting, a lot of gamers/power user types in the west have been turning against Microsoft for issues with Windows 11 and Copilot. I got tired of their shit years ago and went to Mac for computers, but I still game on an Xbox Series X.
I do like seeing PlayStation get taken down a peg, because for all Microsoft’s issues, PlayStation has always been more anti-consumer. Trophies exist on PlayStation because Achievements were so popular on Xbox that PlayStation (and Steam) were practically forced to adopt them. Xbox has pushed for cross-play and PlayStation has always rejected it. Backwards compatibility is what the PS2 was known for, and the PS3 did it at first, but since then, they haven’t been as good, whereas Xbox has been great about backwards compatibility. Not perfect but great.
Xbox Series X is $649. PS5 is $699.
649<699
Xbox Series X is cheaper than PS5.
Is that the latest Xbox? God the names are so dumb.
The official PS blog says the disc version of the PS5 is $649 and discless is $599. It’s currently on sale on Amazon, but the regular list price for a PS5 with disc drive there is $649.
As if Microsoft supported Japanese customers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-98
PlayStation and Nintendo were embedded in the market, why would they engage with the Americans?
To be fair, ‘PlayStation’ is an American brand now, SIE is headquartered in California.
Here we go Nintendo! Sue your way out of this!
Switch2 is selling insanely well in Japan as they have their special Japan-only subsidised version. (¥49,980/~USD$313)
Anybody not just buying a steam deck instead of the recent consoles is a moron, plain and simple.
The Steam Deck, both LCD and OLED models, are out of stock, unless you count Swappa, eBay and other resellers.
https://swappa.com/listings/steam-deck
https://swappa.com/listings/steam-deck-oled
Just don’t be lazy and retroactively buy one a year ago before the shortages and AI RAM issues. It’s not that hard. Just invent a time machine. 🤷♂️
if anyone cant invent a time machine to go buy a steam deck, youre a moron. plane a simple
This is why competition is good
Whilst it’s an oversimplification, if the old price only got Y sales then a higher new price was always only going to get a subset of Y.
Console sales go up over time in part because the price goes down, broadening the customer base. Sure, the library gets bigger over time too, but that’s barely happening either.
Plus people knew the increase was coming so I imagine there was a spike in sales just before hand.